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Nice experiment Melissa. 
My reading suggests you could double the amount of malt to 1%, but that going any higher is risky. My experimentation suggests that diastatic malt can make a significant difference in oven spring with weak wheats, but I don’t think it is needed with strong wheats. Your inconsistent results with respect to oven spring would seem to validate this given that you are using mostly bread flour, which I’m sure is strong. So, with strong wheats, I would conclude that malt can have a role as a flavor enhancer. By the way, diastatic malt can also have a role in rye breads. Russian bakers, such as Rus Brot and Sergey Kirillov, add it to scalds to kickstart saccharification. This way a scald can be held at a high temperature for just a couple of hours instead of the 5 or 6 hours needed without the kickstarting.
Thanks, Mark!
Yep, strong flour plus 0.5% diastatic malt seems to mainly impact color, moisture, and perhaps flavor, for the more sensitive palate.
I can imagine saccharification would go faster with the addition of diastatic malt.
Great experiment Melissa, thanks for doing it and posting your excellent results. I too have used up to 1% diastatic malt, only for baguettes for the purpose of getting the crust browned more quickly since baguettes have a much shorter oven time than other loaves. I too have not had any issues with a gummy crumb with 1% diastatic malt. But like you, I usually only use 0.5% in other breads that don’t have a lot of whole grain in them.
Benny
Thanks, Melissa. I have little experience using diastatic malt and enjoyed your experiment and comments. I sometimes use CM Organic Artisan Baker’s Craft Plus, labeled as a bread flour but with 11.5% protein, is more of an all purpose flour with diastatic malt. I have felt that it performed somewhat better than other quality all purpose flours. I haven’t added it to a high protein flour, as in your experiment, but since I love the dark, rich color of Benny’s bread, perhaps I should try it.
Richard
That intense caramelization is indeed lovely 
Interesting as always, Melissa.
I tried this with Eric’s “Traditional Whole Grain Sourdough,” and did see some results, though this was a sample size of 1, with the usual confounding factors, so I don’t want to claim a lot.
The bread didn’t seem to rise any more or less than usual. This version is entirely whole grain, substituting white winter wheat for the bread flour.
It did respond to heat differently. No visible difference in the crust, apart from the fact that the tip of one of the ears singed slightly, but when I toast it, it does brown more, and singe a little at a few cut surfaces. The singeing isn’t significant enough to matter.
The texture of the bread is softer and possibly moister, and you’d notice the difference in flavor right away. Eating it toasted made me think of the way bread hits you when you eat it fresh out of the oven. (Er, or so I’ve heard. Obviously that would be a terrible thing to do.) A pleasantly warm taste, a little sweeter than usual, while the tang of the sourdough is still present. It goes well with apple butter. I’ve compared it with an unmalted version of the bread, side by side, and like both, but the malted version is kind of comfortable, and I plan on making it again.
Together with the bannocks, this made me think about trying sprouted rye, red wheat, and spelt in the bread.
Cool experiment. Thank you for sharing that info. It’s neat that you didn’t find a difference in fermentation timing, and mine essentially wasn’t different either, since one time was faster and one time was slower.
You’ve also made me want to make and eat this bread, and include diastatic malt powder in the dough. I think I’ll make a big Thanksgiving miche. Did you use 0.5% total flour weight?
Yes, I did. I’d be interested in whether you get the same impression I did about the taste.
I’ve just tried the malted version of the bread against bread made from sprouted red wheat and rye (I didn’t have sprouted spelt berries lying around). My impression was that the malt smoothed things out a little – the flavor was pleasant, but not as complex or earthy. I prefer the non-malted version, but the malted version would be good to have sometimes, and probably more of a crowd pleaser.
The sprouted grain worked out well enough that I’ll get some sprouted spelt and try going all the way with it.
Was the malted version also with sprouted red wheat and rye? I’m thinking that using sprouted wheats/rye is almost like using diastatic malt powder.
Yes, that’s what I thought, too, which is why the malt experiment suggested trying the sprouted red wheat and rye in the first place. (Particularly since, like the malt, they just happened to be in the house anyway.) It could be that it put the spelt, which was unsprouted, more in the foreground. Anyway, the results surprised me, which is why I want to try it with sprouted spelt as well, just for the sake of science. My guess is that the earthiness will no longer be as prominent, but that remains to be seen.
The malted version differed only in using malt. I wanted a clean comparison, and in any case using both malt and sprouted grain would have been overkill.
Ah I get it now 